Originally Posted by
Wight
As I was preparing for D&D, I had found this page, detailing a conversion of the D&D alignments to real-world equivalents. There was an interesting point made about the naming schema; that while "lawful" and "good" are generally positive labels, "chaotic" and "evil" characters tend to have more complex motivations than their labelling would suggest.
What is your opinion of this? Some of these values are considered more important to society in general, and some are more important to different individuals, yet while all of these traits can be both positive and negative, the green and yellow half is generally seen as being more positive than the other half.
For those interested, you may also want to consider how the D&D alignments correspond to this spectrum. Do you agree with how they are represented?
Now granted, evil characters may have more complex motivations for their actions, but I do believe that characters that are "evil" are decided ultimately by their concern for other beings. It matters whether or not their actions take into account fellow beings. Generally, Holy characters also have a flaw here too, at least the ones overtaken in their "gods warpath". But most rational characters have a sense of morality about them. I don't think that you can call a king evil because he decides to wage a war, but if he has no regard for his own troops and little care of whether they die or not, then I'd consider him evil. I don't think it's a perspective thing in theses cases. Granted, there should be a way to identify this characteristic in D&d, but I don't think the system is all that flawed at the moment. I don't find chaotic very negative, just random. Evil is supposed to be negative. Power and Ambition are not always bad things, but they tend to spawn evil intentions in their pursuit.